City Council Notebook

Agenda highlights for the Thursday, August 30, City Council meeting.

Item 8: $1 million plus to repair Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Facility. Eww!

Item 10: Taking a whole shitload (word to Hornsby Bend) of money ($2.8 in one-time funds, $2 million outta Vehicle Acquisitions – I'm so lost!) to buy a bunch of "E85 fuel police patrol sedans." The Corn Cops hit the streets.

Item 19: $5,000 agreement with AISD for Austin Eastside Story camp. When you're a jet, you're a jet, etc… (Hey kids, don't smoke!)

Items 23-25: Lotsa money – over $27 million – for three Austin Clean Water Program repair programs.

Item 28: And the motherload – another $27 million (with a million-plus contingency) for the Waller Creek Tunnel Project.

Items 34 – 66: A Purchasing Office shopping spree, with the city dropping hundreds of millions on 118 police patrol cars, decaled t-shirts, over-the-phone language interpretation services, gas masks and cartridges, tuberculosis case management software and hardware, roadway striping and manhole covers, amongst other things. Item 62 drops $337,000 on new TASERs. Shocking!

Item 72: Setting a public hearing Sept. 27 top consider Jennifer Kim's new anti-panhandling ordinance. Currently, it's only illegal downtown, and we all know how effective that is.

Item 77: 10:30am presentation of the Barton Springs Pool Master Plan.

Item 84: The 2pm utilities and infrastructure budget presentation (Austin Energy, Austin Water Utility, Public Works, Watershed Protection and Development Review, Neighborhood Planning and Zoning, and Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services).

Items 85-86: The entirety of the day's zoning items! Did a bomb go off which only killed developers?

5:30 Proclamations: Grand Opening of the oft-delayed Mexican American Cultural Center. Hmm. Between zoning and this, hell really has frozen over!